THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 8, 1996 TAG: 9607060227
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: BY ROBERT KASTEN, JOURNAL OF COMMERCE
LENGTH: 91 lines
The Institute for Policy Innovation and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution have just released a new study that tells us much about what is wrong with Washington. Titled ``Candidates for Corrections Day: The 10 Worst Regulations of the Federal Government,'' the study is a compendium of what eight public policy experts think are some of the worst federal regulations.
The 10 include:
Wetlands: Rules on federal wetlands emerged not from a law passed by Congress but from the initiative of federal bureaucrats. The rules on wetlands come from interpretations by the Army Corps of Engineers of a 1972 law that doesn't even mention the word ``wetlands.'' The specific section the corps uses as a basis for regulating these areas addresses only navigable waters, which the corps has now determined includes wetlands - even though these obviously aren't navigable.
Because of this bureaucratic morass, individual use permits take an average of 373 days to complete. Even then, fewer than one-third of individual permits are approved.
Special education: As with wetlands, federal rules for special-education students were the product of a regulatory initiative by the federal education bureaucracy. Under these rules, schools may not expel special-education students who have disciplinary problems. Virginia and California have been battling Washington for the ``right'' to throw out students who have brought drugs and weapons to school.
Environmental tobacco smoke: These rules were based on the Environmental Protection Agency's manipulation of scientific methods to overstate the health risk of environmental tobacco smoke.
Among other things, the EPA used a lower threshold than normal to determine risk. Instead of using the more traditional 95 percent confidence level in its statistical tests, EPA used only a 90 percent level. If it used the 95 percent standard, the results would have shown no statistically significant difference in cancer rates between those exposed to environmental tobacco smoke and those who are not.
Superfund regulations: The EPA tends to manipulate the public by exaggerating site risks, frightening communities and wasting public and private resources in unnecessary cleanup activities. The natural result of the EPA's efforts is that often a more expensive cleanup measure is used when a cheaper method would work just as well.
Defense Department outsourcing: The biggest problem here is the so-called 60-40 rule, which states that no more than 40 percent of the depot maintenance needs of each military service may be provided by personnel who are not employees of the federal government. This effectively prevents privatization, which could save as much as $2 billion a year.
Off-label drug use: Under Food and Drug Administration rules, it is now often illegal for pharmaceutical companies to send physicians reprints of scientific articles reporting research on off-label use of drugs. The FDA maintains this policy under the pretext of protecting consumers from misinformation, completely ignoring all the beneficial consumer information they are blocking.
FDA approval of medical devices: James Phillips, former aide to FDA Commissioner David Kessler, recently charged that the FDA has poorly prioritized its activities and therefore ``ignored other pressing needs.'' This may account for stagnation in the FDA's efforts to lower approval times of new medical devices.
The peanut subsidy program: An archaic system of quotas has badly distorted the peanut market and led to artificially high prices for consumers - between $314 million and $513 million a year, according to the General Accounting Office.
Toxics release inventory: Industrial facilities are required to report annually their releases and transfers of chemicals listed on the Toxics Release Inventory. While this sounds like a good idea, risk assessments of such chemicals would show that most pose no threat to human health or the environment.
The Delaney clause: This regulation prohibits any measurable residue (from, say, pesticides) of any cancer-causing substance in any processed food. While this rule may have made sense in 1958 when it was enacted, science has long since passed by Delaney. That's because residues then could be measured only in parts per thousand. Now they can be measured in parts per trillion and sometimes even in parts per quintillion, levels that typically pose no threat to anyone.
Congress should begin reversing these rules as soon as possible. It also should take to heart two larger lessons: Less regulation does not mean greater danger for the public, and getting the federal government to focus on core concerns can save lives.
A study of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and other agencies by Dr. Tammy Tengs and Dr. John Graham showed that if federal regulators reset their priorities and focused on real threats, 11,000 premature deaths could be avoided annually. MEMO: Robert Kasten, a former senator from Wisconsin, is chairman of the
Center on Regulation and Economic Growth at the Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution in Arlington, Va. by CNB